As you can see, Healthcare has a distribution of 31% Outperformers and 69% Others. Overall, that breakout is similar to many other industries – with one exception. 19% of respondents identified that they had a high Anticipate capability with a low Listen capability.

This is unusual as typically most organizations will develop strong Listen capabilities before investing in Anticipate capabilities. The majority of healthcare organizations we surveyed followed this more typical model, but the higher number of outliers here suggests a couple of things: 1) Healthcare firms recognize the benefits of applying analytics to data in order to develop insights and 2) they could be dealing with an overwhelming amount of patient data that limits their ability to listen effectively.

Most Important Issues over the next 3 years:

We also saw something a bit different when we asked healthcare organizations about their most important issues over the next 3 years. Most other industries are focused on technical, economic or organizational challenges. Healthcare firms are clearly most focused on patient safety. It was selected as a top issue by 55% of respondents, with the next highest issue, compliance, only being selected by 37% of respondents. We also saw that an often talked about topic, cost control landed in 5th place with 28% of respondents selecting it.

Digging a little bit deeper into the data, we found that the vast majority of healthcare Outperformers collected data at every customer interaction (82%) and were 1.7x more likely to do so than the Others. This was the 2nd highest overall percentage behind retailers.

However, when we asked about their ability to capture unstructured data, we saw that healthcare organizations are struggling. Only 45% of the Outperformers captured unstructured data (2nd lowest overall) compared with 30% of the Others. This lends at least some credence to the theory mentioned above that some healthcare organizations may be struggling to keep up with the volume of data that is now available to them.

Also supporting the theory that healthcare organizations are embracing the value of analytics, when we asked who they shared insights with, we saw some of the highest numbers of any industry.

82% of Outperformers (vs 44% of Others) use insights to guide the actions of executive decision makers. 87% of Outperformers (vs 33% of Others) share insights with suppliers and business partners. 87% of Outperformers (vs 54% of Others) used analytics to recommend actions to patients. The Outperformer numbers were some of the highest of any industry and are all very logical ways for healthcare organizations to leverage insights from analytics.

This same theme continues when we look at where healthcare organizations realize value from analytics. 60% of Outperformers (vs 42% of Others) realize value when it comes to Patient Relationship Management. 48% of Outperformers (vs 33% of Others) realize value from Workforce Planning and Optimization. Again, these were all large percentages compared to other industries.

We did however see that there was a gap when it came to collaborating and sharing knowledge. Only 18% of Outperformers were realizing value here. That said, the overall numbers across industries were low for collaboration and sharing, but with analytics providing such strong value in a number of areas for healthcare organizations it seems logical that a possible next step would be to build better collaboration and sharing capabilities. After all, if nobody knows about an insight that’s been developed regarding a patient, drug, procedure, etc, it can’t add significant value.

Overall the data we see from healthcare organizations suggests that Outperformers are truly leveraging their Anticipate capabilities to drive value for the organization and for patients. That said, there’s still opportunity to add value by continuing to develop the Listening capability while making sure that insights and knowledge can be shared across the organization.

Just like our State of Smart research has shown that outperforming organizations listen (and anticipate), Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer shows us that listening is no less important for leaders. Interestingly enough, this was something he picked up from Sam Palmisano. Sharer points out that listening with the sole goal of understanding or comprehension, is the greatest sign of respect you can extend to others. As a leader within your organization, do you listen with the sole goal of understanding? And perhaps more importantly, does your company listen to its customers with that same mindset?